Kunal Mundra, former India chief executive officer of used car selling platform Cars24, has teamed up with lease finance platform Grip Invest to launch his new startup, Electrifi Mobility, a full-stack B2B electric vehicle asset management and leasing company.
The platform, which was started in June, aims to provide an end-to-end asset management solution, covering asset selection, leasing, maintenance, post-sales support, refurbishment and redeployment of EV assets.
Electrifi Mobility claims that in the last two months, it has already deployed assets worth Rs 10 crore with deals worth Rs 30 crore already in the pipeline.
Prior to Cars24 India, Mundra was the executive vice president at Bain Capital India, where he led India portfolio operations. He was responsible for post-investment management of Bain Capital India’s $2 billion+ investment portfolio.
Previously, he was the managing director and chief executive officer of tyre manufacturer CEAT Specialty Tyres Ltd. He has also worked at The Boston Consulting Group. He is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore.
“When I left Cars24, the entire India or for that matter the world’s journey to net zero is getting as serious as it gets. So, I was focused that I want to build something in the cleantech space, as there were enough problems to be solved,” said Mundra.
He added that India’s journey to net zero will pivot around the electrification of transportation. When he started conversations around the electrification of transportation, his paths crossed with Grip Invest’s co-founder and chief executive officer Nikhil Aggarwal.
Grip is an investment platform for fixed-income opportunities. It has a keen focus on electric vehicle opportunities, with 30% of the investment raised going towards EVs, making it a leading lessers of EVs in India. Its primary source of fundraising is retail investors.
However, retail investors are not enough to meet the demand being witnessed by the growing sector.
“The demand is massive that we can play across the risk-return as retail investors will never be able to absorb the entire demand that is available,” said Aggarwal.
In the meanwhile, the company has started raising debt and is in the process of raising more from non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) and development finance institutions (DFIs) to meet the capital demand of fleet operators. The company is also gearing up for its seed funding round which it expects to close in the near future.
At present, Electrifi works with 30 different fleet operators, including Zypp Electric, Blu Smart, Battery Smart, and Euler. On the battery side, the company has forged partnerships with Static, ChargeZone, and Magenta, among others.